NARRATIVE OF PRISON LIFE
AT BALTIMORE AND JOHNSON'S
ISLAND, OHIOBYHENRY E. SHEPHERD, M. A., LL. D.
Formerly Superintendent of Public Instruction, Baltimore.
Author of “The Life of Robert E. Lee,” “History of
the English Language,” “Commentary upon
Tennyson's ‘In Memoriam,’ ” etc.1917Commercial Ptg. & Sta. Co.Baltimore

[Portrait of Henry E. Shepherd]

NARRATIVE OF PRISON LIFE

I WAS captured at Gettysburg on the fifth day of July,
1863. A bullet had passed through my right knee
during the fierce engagement on Culp's Hill, July 3rd,
and I fell into the hands of the Federal Army.

By the 6th of July Lee had withdrawn from
Pennsylvania, and, despite the serious nature of my
wound, I was removed to the general hospital,
Frederick City, Md. Here for, at least a month, I was
under the charge of the regular army surgeons, at
whose hands I received excellent and skillful treatment.
For this I have ever been grateful. I recall, also, many
kindnesses shown me by a number of Catholic Sisters
of Frederick, whose special duty was the care of the
sick and the wounded.

On the 14th of August I was taken to Baltimore.
Upon arriving, I was forced to march with a number of
fellow prisoners from Camden Station to the office of
the Provost Marshal, then situated at the Gilmor
House, directly facing the Battle Monument. The
weather was intensely hot, and my limb was bleeding
from the still unhealed wound. After an exhausting
delay, I was finally removed in an ambulance to the
“West Hospital” at the end of Concord street, looking
out upon Union Dock and the wharves at that time
occupied by the Old Bay Line or Baltimore Steam
Packet Company.

The West Building was originally a warehouse
intended for the storage of cotton, now transformed
into a hospital by the Federal government. It had not a
single element of adaptation for the purpose to which
it was applied.

The immense structure was dark, gloomy, without
adequate ventilation, devoid of sanitary of hygienic
appliances or conveniences, and pervaded at all times
by the pestilential exhalations which arose from the
neighboring docks. During the seven weeks of my
sojourn here, I rarely tasted a glass of cold water, but
drank, in the broiling heat of the dog days, the warm,
impure draught that flowed from the hydrant adjoining
the ward in which I lay. My food was mush and
molasses with hard bread, served three times a day.

When I reached the West Building, I was almost
destitute of clothing, for such as I had worn was
nearly reduced to fragments, the surgeons having
multilated it seriously while treating my wound
received at Gettysburg.
My friends made every effort to furnish me with a
fresh supply but without avail. The articles of wearing
apparel designed for me were appropriated by the
authorities in charge, and the letter which
accompanied them was taken unread from my hands.
Moreover, my friends and relatives, of whom I had not
a few in Baltimore, were rigorously denied all access to
me; if they endeavored to communicate with me, their
letters were intercepted; and if they strove to minister
to my relief in any form, their supplies were turned back
at the gate of the hospital, or confiscated to the use of
the wardens and nurses.

On one occasion a party of Baltimore ladies who
were anxious to contribute to the well being of the
Confederate prisoners in the West Building, were
driven from the sidewalk by a volley of decayed eggs
hurled at them by the hospital guards. I was present
when this incident occurred, and hearing the uproar,
limped from my bunk to the window, just in time to see
the group of ladies assailed by the eggs retreating up
Concord street in order to escape these missiles. They
were soon out of range, and their visit to the hospital
was never repeated, at least during my sojourn within
its walls.

I remained in West Hospital until September
29th, 1863, at which date I was transferred to
Johnson's Island, Ohio, our route being by the
Northern Central Railway from Calvert Station through
Pittsburg to Sandusky, Ohio. Our party consisted of
about thirty-five Confederate officers, one of the
number being General Isaac R. Trimble, the foremost
soldier of Maryland in the Confederate service, who
was in a state of almost absolute helplessness, a limb
having been amputated above the knee in
consequence of a wound received at Gettysburg on
the 2nd of July.

A word in reference to the methods of treatment,
medical and surgical, which prevailed in West Hospital,
may serve to illustrate the immense advance in those
spheres of science, since the period I have in
contemplation - 1863-64. Lister had only recentlv
promulgated his beneficent and far reaching discovery,
aseptics; and even the use of anaesthetics, which had
been known to the world for nearly fifteen years, was
awkward, crude and imperfect. The surgeons of that
time seemed to be timorous in the application of their
own agency, and the carnival of horrors which was
revealed on more than one occasion in the operating
room, might have engaged the loftiest power of tragic
portrayal displayed by the author of “The Inferno.”
The gangrene was cut from my wound, as a butcher
would cut a chop or a steak in the Lexington market; it
may have been providential that I was
delivered from the anaesthetic blundering then in
vogue, and “recovered in spite of my physician.”
Consideration originating in sensibility, or even in
humanity, found no place in West Hospital. To
illustrate concretely, a soldier, severely wounded, was
brought into the overcrowded ward in which I lay.
There was no bunk or resting place at his disposal, but
one of the stewards
recognizing the exigency, soon found a ghastly
remedy. “Why,” he said, pointing to a dying man in
his cot, “that old fellow over there will soon be dead
and as soon as he is gone, we'll put this man in his
bed.” And so the living soldier was at once consigned
to the uncleansed berth of his predecessor. Five
years after the war had passed into history, I met the
physician who had
attended me, on a street car in South Baltimore. He did
not recognize me, as I had been transformed from boyhood
to manhood, since I endured my
seven weeks' torture from thirst and hunger in the
cavernous recesses of West Hospital. Among the
notable characters who visited the sick and wounded,
was Thomas Swann, associated in more than one
relation with the political fortunes of Maryland. The
object of his mission was to prevail upon his nephew,
then in the Confederate service, to forswear himself
and become
a recreant to the cause of the South. His purpose was
accomplished without apparent difficulty, or delay in
assuring the contemplated result. Rev. Dr. Backus,
pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, was another
visitor whom I recall. Not one of those who would
gladly have ministered to my needs, was ever allowed
to cross the threshold, or in any form to communicate
with me.

The first of October, 1863, found me established
in Block No. 11, at Johnson's Island, Ohio. This, one of
the most celebrated of the Federal prisons, is situated
about three miles from Sandusky, near the mouth of its
harbor, not remote from the point at which Commodore
Perry won his famous victory during the second war
with England, September 10th, 1813. On every side,
Lake Erie and the harbor encompassed it effectually.
Nature had made it an ideal prison. There was but a
single hope of escape, and that was by means of the
dense ice which enveloped the island during the
greater part of the winter season. I once saw 1,500
Federal soldiers march in perfect security from
Sandusky to Johnson's Island, a distance of three
miles, across the firmly frozen harbor. This was in
January, 1864. The area of the island was estimated at
eight acres; it is now devoted to the peaceful purpose
of grape culture.

During the summer months, when the lake
was free from ice, a sloop of war lay constantly off the
Island, with her guns trained upon the barracks. Yet,
notwithstanding the seemingly hopeless nature of the
surroundings, there were a few successful attempts to
escape. I knew personally at least two of those who
scaled the high wall and made their way across the
frozen harbor under cover of the friendly darkness.
One of these, Colonel Winston, of Daniel's N. C.
Brigade, during the fearful cold January, 1864, covered
his hands with pepper, and wearing a pair of thick
gloves, sprang over the wall, escaped to Canada, and
reached the Confederacy via Nassau and Wilmington,
N. C., running the blockade at the latter point. Another
was Mr. S. Cremmin, of Louisiana, for many years
principal of a male grammar school in Baltimore, who
died as recently as 1908. Mr. Cremmin reached the
South through Kentucky, cleverly representing himself
as an ardent Union sympathizer. Those who failed, as
by far the greater number did (for I can recall not more
than three or four successful attempts in all), were
subjected to the most degrading punishments in the
form of servile labor, scarcely adapted to the status of
convicts.

This island prison was intended for the
confinement of Confederate officers only, of whom
there were nearly three thousand immured within
its walls during the period of my residence. The
greater part of these had been captured at Gettysburg
and Port Hudson, just at the date of the suspension of
the cartel of exchanges of prisoners on the part of
the Federal government, July, 1863.

As it is the aim of this narrative to present a
simple statement of personal experiences, not
impressions or inferences deduced from the narrative
of others, every incident or episode described is
founded upon the individual or immediate knowledge
of the writer. I relate what I saw and heard, not what I
received upon testimony, however accurate or
trustworthy. My record of the period that I passed at
Johnson's Island will be devoted to the consideration
of several essential points, each of them being
illustrated by one or more specific examples. To state
them in the simplest form, they are: The rations served
to the Confederate prisoners; measures used to
protect them from the extreme rigor of the climate as to
fuel and clothing; their communication with their
friends in the South, by means of the mails conveyed
through the medium of the flag of truce boats, via
Richmond and Aiken's Landing; and the treatment
accorded them in sickness by the physicians in charge
of the hospital. These, I believe, include the vital
features involved in a narrative of my experiences as a
prisoner in Federal
hands.

During the earlier months of my life on the Island,
a sutler's shop afforded extra supplies for those who
were fortunate enough to have control of small
amounts of United States currency, This happier
element, however, included but a limited proportion of
the three thousand, so that, for the greater part,
relentless and gnawing hunger was the chronic and
normal state. But even this merciful tempering of the
wind to the shorn lambs of implacable appetite, was
destined soon to become a mere memory; for suddenly
and without warning, the sutler and his mitigating
supplies passed away upon the ground of retaliation
for alleged cruelties inflicted upon Federal prisoners in
the hands of the Confederate government. Then began
the grim and remorseless struggle with starvation until
I was released on parole and sent South by way of Old
Point during the final stages of the siege of the
Confederate capital.

With the disappearance of the sutler's stores and
the exclusion of every form of food provided by
friends in the North or at the South, there came the
period of supreme suffering by all alike. Boxes sent
prisoners were seized, and their contents appropriated.
Thus began, and for six months continued, a fierce
and unresting conflict to maintain life upon the
minimum of rations furnished
from day to day by the Federal commissariat.
To subsist upon this or to die of gradual starvation,
was the inevitable alternative. To illustrate the extreme
lengths to which the exclusion of supplies other than
the official rations was carried, an uncle of mine in
North Carolina, who represented the highest type of
the antebellum Southern planter, forwarded to me, by
flag of truce, a box of his finest hams, renowned
through all the land for their sweetness and excellence
of flavor. The contents were appropriated by the
commandant of the Island, and the empty box carefully
delivered to me at my quarters. The rations upon
which life was maintained for the latter months of my
imprisonment were distributed every day at noon, and
were as follows: To each prisoner one-half loaf of hard
bread, and a piece of salt pork, in size not sufficient
for an ordinary meal. In taste the latter was almost
nauseating, but it was devoured because there was no
choice other than to eat it, or endure the tortures of
prolonged starvation. Stimulants such as tea and
coffee were rigidly interdicted. For months I did not
taste either, not even on the memorable first of
January, 1864, when the thermometer fell to 22 degrees
below zero, and my feet were frozen.

Vegetable food was almost unknown, and as a
natural result, death from such diseases as
scurvy, carried more than one Confederate to a grave in
the island cemetery just outside the prison walls. I
never shall forget the sense of gratitude with which I
secured, by some lucky chance, a raw turnip, and in an
advanced stage of physical exhaustion, eagerly
devoured it, as I supported myself by holding on to the
steps of my barrack. No language of which I am
capable is adequate to portray the agonies of
immitigable hunger. The rations which were distributed
at noon each day, were expected to sustain life untill
the noon of the day following. During this interval,
many of us became so crazed by hunger that the
prescribed allowance of pork and bread was devoured
ravenously as soon as received. Then followed an
unbroken fast until the noon of the day succeeding.
For six or seven months I subsisted upon one meal in
24 hours, and that was composed of food so coarse
and unpalatable as to appeal only to a stomach which
was eating out its own life. So terrible at times were the
pangs of appetite, that some of the prisoners who were
fortunate enough to secure the kindly services of a rat-terrier,
were glad to appropriate the animals which were
thus captured, cooking and eating them to allay the
fierce agony of unabating hunger. Although I
frequently saw the rats pursued and caught, I never
tasted their flesh when cooked, for I was so painfully
affected by nausea,
as to be rendered incapable of retaining the ordinary prison fare.

I had become so weakened by months of torture
from starvation that when I slept I dreamed of
luxurious banquets, while the saliva poured from my
lips in a continuous flow, until my soldier shirt was
saturated with the copious discharge.

The winters in the latitude of Johnson's Island
were doubly severe to men born and raised in the
Southern States. Moreover, the prisoners possessed
neither clothing nor blankets intended for such weather
as we experienced. During the winter of 1863-64, I was
confined in one room with seventy other Confederates.
The building was not ceiled, but simply weather-boarded.
It afforded most inadequate protection
against the cold or snow, which at times beat in upon
my bunk with pitiless severity. The room was provided
with one antiquated stove to preserve 70 men from
intense suffering when the thermometer stood at
fifteen and twenty degrees below zero. The fuel given
us was frequently insufficient, and in our desperation,
we burned every available chair or box, and even parts
of our bunks found their way into the stove. During
this time of horrors, some of us maintained life by
forming a circle and dancing with the energy of dispair.

The sick and wounded in the prison hospital
had no especial provision made for their comfort. They
received the prescribed rations, and were cared for in
their helplessness, as in their dying hours, by other
prisoners detailed as nurses To this duty I was once
assigned and ministered to my comrades as faithfully
as I was able from the standpoint of youth and lack of
training.

The mails from the South were received only at
long and agonizing intervals. I did not hear a word
from my home until at least four months after my
capture. The official regulations prescribed 28 lines as
the extreme limit allowed for a letter forwarded to
prisoners of war. When some loving and devoted wife
or mother exceeded this limit, the letter was retained by
the commandant, and the empty envelope, marked
“from your wife,” “your mother,” or “your child,” was
placed in the hands of the prisoner. During my
confinement at Johnson's Island, I succeeded in
communicating with ex-President Pierce, whom my
uncle, James C. Dobbin, of North Carolina, had
prominently supported in the political convention
which nominated Mr. Pierce at Baltimore in 1852.
Knowing this fact, and that my uncle had been closely
associated with Mr. Pierce as Secretary of the Navy, I
addressed a letter to the former President, in the hope
that he might exert some salutary influence which
would induce the authorities to ameliorate our
unhappy condition.

I received a most kind and cordial letter from Mr.
Pierce, who declared “You could not entertain a more
mistaken opinion than to suppose that I have the slightest
power for good with this government.”

Among the Confederate officers who were
imprisoned at Johnson's Island at different times and
during varying periods, were a number who in latter
years won fame and fortune in their respective
spheres, material or intellectual, professional or
commercial. Many of these I knew personally, and I
insert at this point the names of some with whom I
came into immediate relation. In this goodly company I
recall General Archer, of Maryland; General Edward
Johnson, of Virginia; General Jeff. Thompson, of the
Western Army; Col. Thomas S. Kenan, of North
Carolina; General Isaac R. Trimble, of Maryland; Col.
Robert Bingham, the head of the famous Bingham
School of North Carolina; General James R. Herbert, of
Baltimore; Col. Henry Kyd Douglas, of Jackson's staff;
Col. K. M. Murchison, of North Carolina; Col. J.
Wharton Green, owner of the famous Tokay Vineyard,
near Fayetteville, North Carolina; William Morton
Brown, of Virginia, Rockbridge Artillery; Captain B. R.
Smith, of North Carolina; Captain Joseph J. Davis, of
North Carolina; Lieutenant Adolphus Cook, of
Maryland; Lieutenant Houston, of
Pickett's Division; Captain Ravenel Macbeth, of South
Carolina; Captain Matt. Manly of North Carolina;
Lieut. Bartlett Spann, Alabama; Lieut. D. U. Barziza, of
Texas; (Lieutenant Barziza was named “Decimus et
Ultimus,” as the “tenth and last” of the Barziza
children); Lieutenant McKnew, of Maryland;
Lieutenant Crown, of Maryland; Lieut. A. McFadgen,
of North Carolina; Lieutenant McNulty, of Baltimore;
Lieutenants James Metz, Moore, George Whiting, Nat.
Smith, of North Carolina; Major Mayo, Captain Hicks,
Captain J. G. Kenan, of North Carolina; Captain Peeler,
of Florida; Colonel Scales, of Mississippi; Colonel
Rankin, Colonel Goodwin, Lieutenant-Colonel Ellis,
Lieutenant-Colonel “Ham” Jones, all of North Carolina;
Captain J. W. Grabill, of Virginia; Captain Foster, of
Mosby's Command; Dr. Fabius Haywood and
Lieutenant Bond, from North Carolina; Colonel Lock
and Colonel Steadman, of Alabama; Captain Foster,
Captain Gillam, Adjutant Powell, of North Carolina;
Lieutenants King and Jackson, of Georgia.

Many of these whom I have named, are still
living, and this list may be indefinitely extended. They
will attest the essential accuracy of every statement
that this narrative contains.

A monument designed by Sir Moses Ezekiel,
himself a Confederate veteran, and a former
cadet at the school of Stonewall Jackson, was
dedicated in 1908 to the memory of the Confederate
officers whose final resting place is near this island
prison by Lake Erie.

I regret that a rational regard for the conditions of
space renders impracticable a more elaborate narrative
of my life as a captive on the narrow island which lies
at the mouth of the Bay of Sandusky. A mere
enumeration of those with whom I was brought into
contact, representing every Southern State from
Maryland to Texas, the Ogdens, Bonds, Kings,
Manlys, Jacksons, Lewises, Mitchells, Jenkines,
Allens, Winsors, Crawfords, Bledsoes, Beltons, Fites,
in addition to those already named, forms a mighty
cloud of witnesses, a line stretching out almost to “the
crack of doom.” A melancholy irony of fate marked a
large element of the very limited company who
escaped by their own daring, who were so fortunate as
to secure release by exchange, or by the influence or
intercession of friends in accord with the Federal
government. I recall among these, Colonel Boyd,
Colonel Godwin, Captain George Byran, who fell in the
forefront of the fray, charging a battery near Richmond
(1864), dying only a few moments ere it passed into
our hands; and Colonel Brable who, at Spottsylvania,
refused to surrender, and accepted death as an
alternative to be preferred to a renewal of
the tortures involved in captivity. While life on the
island implied gradual starvation of the body as an
inevitable result of the methods which prevailed, I
found food for the intellect in devotion to the books
which had been supplied to me by loving and gracious
friends whose home was in Delaware. There was no
lack of cultured gentlemen in our community, and
in their goodly fellowship I applied my decaying energies
to the Latin classics, Blackstone's Commentaries,
Macaulay's Essays; and found my recreation in Victor
Hugo, whose “Les Misèrables” had all the charm of novelty,
having recently issued from the press. The poet-laureate of
the prison was Major McKnight, whose pseudonym,
“Asa Hartz,” had become a household word, not
with comrades alone, but in all the States embraced
within the Confederacy. I reproduce “My Love and I,”
written upon the island, and in my judgment, his
happiest venture into the charmed sphere of the
Muses.

MY LOVE AND I.
1. “My Love reposes on a rosewood frame(A ‘bunk’ have I).A couch of feathery down fills up the same(Mine's straw, cut dry).2. “My Love her dinner takes in state,And so do I,The richest viands flank her plate,Coarse grub have I.Pure wines she sips at ease her thirst to slake,I pump my drink from Erie's limpid lake.3. “My Love has all the world at will to roam,Three acres I.She goes abroad or quiet sits at home,So cannot I.Bright angels watch around her couch at night,A Yank, with loaded gun keeps me in sight.4. “A thousand weary miles now stretch betweenMy Love and I - To her this wintry night, cold, calm, serene,I waft a sigh - And hope, with all my earnestness of soul,Tomorrow's mail may bring me my parole.5. “There's hope ahead: We'll one day meet again,My Love and I - We'll wipe away all tears of sorrow then;Her love-lit eyeWill all my troubles then beguile,And keep this wayward Reb
from ‘Johnson's Isle.’ ”

So a gleam from the ideal world of poesy fell upon
the gloom of the prison which Mr. Davis, in his
message to the Confederate Congress, December,
1863, described as “that chief den of horrors,
Johnson's Island.”